It's time for my (quite overdue, given it's the 8th ^^;) year-end wrap-up! Heck, I beat a ton of games this year. 130 of 'em! But now it's time to reflect on the most notable entries on both ends of the quality spectrum.
The Worst: #3: Rockman World 3 (GB) - I played a LOT of Mega Man this year, mostly in April, and while there were some really awesome games in there and some ones I really didn't enjoy, the 3rd GameBoy Mega Man game really takes the cake. Overly damaging bosses that move way too fast, stages full of fast platforms and big animations that cause tons of slowdown, and a massive pile of pixel-perfect jumps made this a horrible chore to play through. Mega Man as a series generally keeps such a good baseline of quality that I'd have trouble calling virtually any of them outright "bad", but this game is one I feel no hesitation calling out as heckin' awful. #2: Maken Shao (PS2) - Last year I played through Maken X: a horrible time of a Dreamcast game that used a console with only 1 joystick to have a first-person sword fighting game. In short, it didn't work, but a lot of the problems it had *felt* like they could've been solved had the game been in third-person. Fast forward to this year and I finally got around to playing the PAL and Japan-exclusive remake of Maken X on the PS2, the one that makes it third-person, and was blown away at just how much being in first-person benefited the first game. Maken Shao is nothing but an embarrassing mistake in not acknowledging what not only makes your own game work, but in what even makes action games fun. If the Maken games are any indication, it's a good thing Atlus generally stayed far, far away from developing action titles after these. #1: Shining Wisdom (Saturn) - When I played through Maken Shao way back in summer, I thought there was NO way anything else could be that bad. Little did I know what was waiting for me come December's TR. Now Shining Force 1 and 2 simply weren't for me, but I can understand their popularity to a certain degree, especially back in the 90's when they came out. Shining Wisdom, on the other hand, is a game so baffling in its construction that I can only summarize it as "an astoundingly bad time". A game that seems to go out of its way to do just about everything (sans the music) wrong, it is undoubtedly not only the worst game I've played this year, but it's also easily one of the worst games I've ever beaten, full stop. ---- The Best: #5: Tales of Xillia (PS3) - It's been a while since I've played through a Tales game, and it was about time I did. I'd heard Xillia was quite good, and those people were absolutely right! Xillia isn't quite my favorite game in the series, but it's damn close. Very interesting and well-fleshed out themes combined with a tightly written & charming main cast made this an absolute blast to play, and the fun combat helped a bunch too~. It's a shame the sequel is such a mess, but the first game is definitely one of the best games in the series that I've played~. #4: moon RPG (Switch) - moon RPG is a bit deceptively named, given that it's pretty clearly an adventure game and not an RPG at all, but regardless it's still a very wild adventure through an RPG-like world. A very clever deconstruction of RPG tropes, moon doesn't so much criticize video games as they are, so much as postulate what they *could* be, and it does it through a delightfully strange and weird world packed with charming characters and locales. I really do hope Onion Games decides to localize and port more of their old games, as even though most (or all) of them aren't as good as moon, there's a lot of greatness to be found in this old gem that finally got localized (and a truly stellar localization it is!). #3: Hermina & Culus (PS2) - In my sudden urge to play just about as many Atelier games this year as I could get my little hands on, I happened upon the existence of this weird little VN spin-off to the main series' third entry. I was able to track down a copy, and I was told it was pretty short, so I grabbed it and played through it all in one sitting. Afterwards, I was glad that I didn't play it in a voice call and glad I played through it in one sitting, because I'm not sure any game has made me cry in one burst as much as this one did (and one I still tear up thinking about). A captivating story about unconventional families/relationships, growing up, and loss, this is a game I love so much that at several points I've considered trying to fan-translate it myself, because more people need to experience this. I'm not sure I'll ever actually get around to that, but damn if I'm not tempted every time I think about it #2: The Missing (Switch) - I've been hearing for years that The Missing is a great game about the trans experience, and I really can't say that those statements were wrong after having played it myself. It does a brilliant job of using both more subtle metaphor alongside more direct explanations to get its messages across to the audience, and I couldn't stop thinking of so many of my real life trans friends (not to mention myself) while I was playing it. A story so raw and true to life that I kinda didn't wanna keep going but also never wanted it to end, this was an awesome game to cap the year off with. #1: Atelier Totori (PS3) - A game I'd already watched a friend play before I played it, I was kinda shocked at myself for just how hard it was still able to hit me. The mechanics of Atelier Totori are a really fun and well-polished refining of what had made Atelier Rorona work so well (a revival of the series' older mechanics). It's a really fun game to play and try to find all the secrets and best battle strategies in. It's also one of my favorite stories I've seen in a video game. A really touching story about family, grief, and growing up that had me in tears over and over with just how bad it hit me. This game, more than any other this year, has definitely been ushered into my list of all-time favorite RPGs I've played. ---- Honorable Mentions/Special (In no particular order): #A: Blue Stinger (DC) - Our own little mini-TR outside of the other TR's! It was a lot of fun going through this together, especially when I got to hear y'all's opinions on it. It was very interesting to see how different from the other regions the Japanese version is, and it even ended up being one of my most enjoyed games I've played on my Dreamcast #B: Doraemon: Nobita To Mittsu No Seireiseki (N64) - This was a surprisingly good, even shockingly good, licensed game on the N64. Now it's hardly the best thing ever, but I was really blown away at just how competent and well-polished the whole N64 Doraemon trilogy is. The reason it's on this list, however, is because it's something that helped me meet on of my new best friends last year. She grew up watching Doraemon on TV, and me streaming this game to our Discord chat (as well as its two sequels) gave us a lot to talk about when we were first meeting, so it will always hold an extra special place in my heart ^w^ <3 #C: Fruits of Grisaia (PC) - Now this is a game I technically saw the end of (well, one of them anyhow) but never actually wrote a review of. It's a visual novel I played through a bit of every weekend with my significant other for months, with her voicing the female characters and myself voicing the male main character. We only actually finished one route of five, so I didn't really feel comfortable writing a full-blown review on it (and there's also such a wild mix of genuinely good and well-done writing mixed in along with some really skeevy/porny stuff that I would've had a monster of a time writing about it anyhow XP). Regardless, it was something that brought us a lot closer together and something we bonded over a lot. We both have very mixed feelings about the quality of it, but it will always hold a very special place in our hearts. As an example of that, she even sent me a really sweet screenshot from one of the epilogues we saw as an extra message after we got engaged in December <3
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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